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Jan Moir visits Foxtrot Oscar, London SW3
Foxtrot Oscar in lower Chelsea was one of London’s famously louche restaurants, but how would I know? If I am ever in that area I am buying pillowcases in Peter Jones or a fresh card of navy buttons from their most excellent haberdashery department. I am not drinking gin at one in the morning and wondering if that man in the balding velvet jacket is Joanna Lumley’s ex-husband or Günter Sachs the playboy. S used to go, of course. Hanging with the homies in their flowered shirts and matching ties, eating new-fangled hamburgers and doing the twist to early Blondie. Indeed, every swinger in town used to turn up at FO sooner or later, drawn by the late licensing hours and the scruffy, boozy conviviality encouraged by cosy wooden panelling, a tiny bar and lots of tables. There was also a genial mine host, one of those maverick old Etonians who pop up in catering now and again, and usually rather wish they hadn’t.
Foxtrot Oscar – areyoureadytoorder.co.uk review in full >>
The Independent, 26 January
John Walsh visits The Landau, Langham Hotel, London
The Langham Hotel was Europe's first deluxe hotel when it opened in 1865, half a century before César Ritz thought of opening a place bearing his name at the vulgar end of Piccadilly. The Langham invented several things (such as thick carpets in the bathrooms) that defined luxury in the leisure industry. So when they open a flagship restaurant after a multimillion-quid refit, you know that it's going to be dead glamorous. When you arrive, you're met by a twinkling maitre d' who knows your name and the time your table's booked. He takes you past gorgeous glass cabinets displaying bottles of Côte Rôtie and Chateau Mouton Rothschild, and waves you into the dining room with its slightly strained décor: gilded wood panelling at one end, acid-stripped wooden doors hung with Japanese paintings of trees at the other.
The Landau – review in full >>
The Daily Telegraph, 26 January
Mark Palmer visits The Horseshoe Inn, Eddleston, Peeblesshire
The Horseshoe Inn isn't for sale, but most of the stuff in it seems to be up for grabs. You might assume that the place is on its uppers, but nothing could be further from the truth. This former pub that once housed a blacksmith's is now a very fancy restaurant that recently took top honours at the Scottish Borders Restaurant Awards. It's about five miles north of Peebles, a mere 30 minutes by car from Edinburgh, in a beautiful area of unspoilt countryside. Not that you would know where you are once you step inside and are confronted by a mishmash of regrettable furniture, random knick-knacks and incongruous paintings. It's as if the young owners, French chef-director Patrick Bardoulet and his partner Vivienne Steele, are ashamed of their immediate surroundings and want to give the impression that their restaurant is located anywhere but here.
The Horseshoe Inn – The Daily Telegraph review in full >>
The Sunday Times, 27 January
AA Gill visits Urban Turban, London W2
I once had a big, black, Balinese cock. It was about a yard tall, fully extended, and was very black, with a sinewy, metallic, blue-green iridescence. Game cocks are fighting birds and all leg. They have tiny, malevolent, beady heads, like the missile triggers on Top Gun joysticks. This one had the look and temperament of Naomi Campbell waiting for room service. Hens fled from its dark, murderous lust.
Urban Turban – The Sunday Telegraph review in full >>
The Observer, 27 January
Jay Rayner visits Hot Stuff, London SW8
If you were to judge a restaurant solely by the wine I was drinking in it, you would assume Hot Stuff to be one of those places where dinner can not begin until you have been served something to amuse your big, fat bouche, and a fair proportion of the humungous bill has gone on paying an interior designer to do something unnecessary with curtains the colour of stained teeth. This is because the bottle on my table was a fine Pomerol. Hot Stuff is not that kind of place. It is a simple, neighbourhood Indian restaurant in Vauxhall.
Hot Stuff – The Observer review in full >>